But then I found the Spent Grain Chef and his/her/their recipe for Barley Snack Bars. I saved some grain from my last batch, dried it out and gave it a try.

First, the good. These bars are very easy to make and very tasty. They are a great afternoon snack. Or morning snack. Or late-night snack.

But if there's good, there's always bad. Thankfully the bad is pretty minor and easy to fix. I think the recipe calls for too much butter and brown sugar. In subsequent batches I've cut these ingredients by half and the bars still turn out great. The real binder and sweetener is the honey, the butter and sugar are minor players.

Second, you probably don't want to follow the instructions exactly. The butter/honey mixture can be brought to a quick boil in the microwave. It's a little faster than using a sauce pan. And with the small amount of oats and almonds it's just as easy to brown them in a toaster oven -- saving you the trouble of pre-heating the big oven for just 6 minutes worth of work. Lastly, I wouldn't use an 11x13 pan. I used a 9x9 pan and it was perfect, giving me bars of just the right thickness.

Once you have the hang of it, it's an easy recipe to modify. Throw in some dried unsweetened cranberries, swap out the almonds for cashews, add a dash of flax seed, and so on.

Sure the chickens get a little less feed, but I'm getting a delicious snack. It's a fair trade.

About a week ago the beer took a turn for the better, which I attribute to a bit of age and fine-tuning of the carbonation level. It became a real pleasure to drink, although I still feel it could have used a few more days in the fermenter.

Aroma: Herby, almost peppery spice. A light grainy-ness.

Appearance: One of the clearest beers I've ever made, attributable to the lack of dry hops and the overdose of Whirlfloc. Color is coppery gold and the head is off-white and dense. It leaves pleasing lace.

Flavor: Starts of with a dose of sweet honey notes that transition into earthy/piney bitterness that lingers long after the swallow. Malt is there somewhere, but it doesn't have a big presence. Maybe a touch of toffee, but it's light.

Overall, I'd say this is a nearly-great beer. The bitterness can get a bit strong, so I might drop it a bit and replace it with either dry hops or more whirlpool hops. Also, I rushed this out of the carboy too quickly. Next time I'll give it 2-3 more days at fermentation temperature before chilling and racking.

• Recipe, fancy
• Recipe, Hopville

This is the second novelty beer that I'm making for this year's Vice City, so I was free to go a little crazy with ingredients. I wouldn't ever make a batch of this myself because I can't imagine trying to drink 5 gallons of a chocolate peanut butter stout. A few months ago I got a growler of a similar beer and it was hard to work my way through just that much!

That's the fun of these novelty beers, though. I can experiment with beers that I'd otherwise never brew, and I don't have to worry about drinking the results.

This recipe started off as Jamil's American Stout recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. I added a bag of lactose to push it closer to a sweet stout, since I thought a sweeter beer would mesh better with the chocolate and peanut butter. And to boost that sweetness I went with a lower-attenuating American yeast: Wyeast Northwest Ale.

To get chocolate into the beer I went with cocoa powder. Others recommended unsweetened baking chocolate, but I didn't want to introduce any more oil into the beer. For the peanut butter I got 8oz of fresh ground peanuts from the store. I then spread out the fresh peanut butter into a thin layer and covered it with paper towels. I replaced the towels as they soaked up the oil. I did this on and off for several weeks, eventually ending up with a mostly de-oiled peanut butter.

Brewing

I kinda stumbled my way through this one due to baby-induced sleep deprivation. I even forgot to add the 5-minute hop addition, which I'm not overly concerned about. This isn't a beer that needs additional hop flavor and that last hop addition was a holdover from the original recipe.

For reasons that I can't quite explain the OG ended up 5 points high, coming in at almost 1.078. My efficiency was a bit higher than expected, but not high enough to explain the jump in OG. Weird, but again not something I'm going to worry about. The other nice thing about novelty beers is that you don't have to sweat the details quite as much.

As with the first experiment, I was cautious in the amount of hops I used in the stand. When I made this beer before, without using the hop stand technique, I used about 196g of hops in flameout and dry additions, and that was for about 22 l of  wort (8.9 g per liter). In the hop stand version I used 154 g of hops at flameout, but for 34 l of wort (4.5g per liter). In terms of grams used per liter, my hop usage decreased by almost 50% between the first batch and the second.

Part of that was because I thought the first version of R?jasth?n was overhopped. It was too bitter and had too much dry hopping. And since I brewed this beer before I knew much about how hop stands work I cut back even further just to be safe.

As with the first hop stand experiment I over compensated and the beer ended up needing more hop character. But, for reasons of time, I'm not going to dry hop this batch. Next time I make it it'll definitely see some dry hops.

Hop Stand Details from Kristen England

Kristen talked about hop stands in episode 59 of Brewing TV and he's clearly talking about whirlpooling during the hop stand. In earlier comments on the technique it sounded like he was letting the wort sit stationary during the stand. I wrote him and asked if he could clarify. And I asked about what role dry hopping has in beers that use hop stands, since I've seen him talk about using a hop stand as both a replacement for and as a supplement to dry hopping. His reply:

It always should be whirlpooled...If you have a pump, its best. If not, make sure you give it a good strong stir every 10 min or so.

As for the UMMO DIPA [a beer that only used hop stands, no dry hopping]...All the dry hops went in at the whirlpool. Its a good idea to hold back 10% of your total dry hop and actually dry hop with them. The whirlpool gets you close but that little bit of dry hop really helps!

So, there you go. Whirlpool or stir during the hop stand and do a small dry hop addition at the end. Of course these aren't the official rules, just suggestions. Modify the technique to meet your own needs.

As I said when I brewed it, my goal for this beer was to incorporate the lessons I learned trying to clone Bitter American and make my own American Session Pale. I wanted something light in alcohol (4.5% abv or so), crisp on the palate and bursting with hop character.

Aroma: Pure hops, a mix of spice and pine. There's a touch of onion in there, but it's way in the background. Maybe a little toast from the malt, but this smell is focused on hops.

Appearance: Light gold/copper. There's a hint of red in there, but not much. The head is just a shade away from pure white and is pretty fluffy. It dissipates to thin layer of foam as the beer settles.

Flavor: Starts off with a firm bitterness backed by a touch of sweetness. Bitterness carries through to the finish, but it doesn't linger for long. There is sweetness enough to keep the hops from being overbearing, but it's in the background. The palate clears quickly, and I'm ready for another sip. Although there's nothing but Simcoe and Amarillo in here, I don't pick up the citrus notes that I would expect. This isn't a grapefruit IPA.

Mouthfeel: Nicely carbonated, medium body. It's not astringent, too watery or too heavy. Right in the middle.

Overall: Obviously I'm pretty happy with this batch. It's almost exactly where I'd like to be, and I'm looking forward to drinking this keg over the next few weeks as the weather warms up. Wouldn't surprise me if I made another batch as soon as I can.

Nonetheless, there are a few small tweaks I'd make. The grist is fine, I think, but I will probably decrease the bittering addition. The recipe calculates 28 IBU and I think something in the low 20s might be better. The hop aroma give so much perceived bitterness that I should decrease the actual bitterness.

And as I learn more about hop stands, I'd probably increase the amount of flame out hops by 50% - 100%. That's something that I'll have to figure out as I play more with the technique.

• Recipe, Hopville
• Recipe, Fancy

The first of the five batches -- and one of the two 'novelty'  batches -- I'm making for this year's Vice City.  This recipe is a bit more than 'novelty'  as it's also an offshoot of my experiments in porters that use a significant amount of brown malt in the grist. I believe that I came up with this recipe after the somewhat disastrous Historical Brown and it incorporates the improvements that I thought that beer needed: a lower percentage of brown malt combined with a larger percentage of sweet specialty malts.

Because brown malt has such a strong nutty flavor, I thought it would pair well with malts that provide honey flavors, hence the golden naked oats and honey malt. I haven't ever used honey malt before, I'm interested in seeing just how much flavor it provides.

I've switched yeasts from the 1318 to the 1335, which is more neutral for an English yeast. I liked it when I used it on my Surly Bender clone, and I thought it would work well here.

Brewing

The recipe is straight forward, so brewing was only complicated by the unknown evaporation rate of my new kettle and my ongoing experiment in whirlfloc usage. Efficiency was weirdly low, but that was easily remedied with some DME. It's always useful to have some DME around! Evaporation came in at 18-19% per hour, which is a lot higher than I expected. Because of that, OG was a couple points high and post-boil volume was a couple liters low. Should be easy enough to correct for next batch.

With this batch I used just 1/4 of a tablet (600 milligrams) of whirlfloc. My whirlpool and chilling procedures remained the same -- chill the wort, start a whirlpool, let the kettle sit -- covered -- for 20 minutes, rack to the fermenter. As far as I could tell the wort was crystal clear and I had significantly less fluffy trub than in my previous batches. Most of the trub had compacted into a nice small cone at the bottom of the fermenter. This is a significant improvement.

The open question is if this batch is more prone to hazes or spoilage due to proteins left in the wort that a larger dose of whirlfloc would have removed. Haze might be hard to spot since this is a pretty dark beer. But spoilage should be easy enough to catch. I'll be kegging this beer when it's done fermenting and it'll be sitting at ambient basement temperature until July. That's not optimal storage, so it should highlight any spoilage problems.

The idea is simple -- after adding your 0-minute hop addition, turn off your burner, cover your kettle and let it sit for 60 to 80 minutes. The wort will stay hot, extracting oils from the hops. But since the wort is not boiling, very little bitterness is extracted. Apparently bitterness is extracted through a combination of heat and agitation; since the hops aren't being agitated, no bitterness. And you also won't lose hop aroma, which can boil off when added to wort earlier in the brewing process.

Because of this increase in hop aroma and flavor, you can tweak your recipe to consolidate all the 20, 15, 10, etc. hop additions into one big 0-minute addition. And, in theory, you can also skip dry hopping. In his forum post Kristen says that he still dry hops. But when we talked about the technique earlier this year, he suggested it as a replacement for dry hopping.

Kristen was enthusiastic about the technique, which he said was commonly used in European breweries. But the only information I could find about it online all traced back to Kristen. It's possible that the technique is called something other than 'hop stand', which is why I'm having trouble tracking down details.

It certainly sounds too good to be true. While I love dry hopped beers, making them has its drawbacks. Dry hopping takes a week or two, extending the time between brew day and a finished beer. And if you dry hop with whole hops -- which I do -- then you'll lose some beer to the hops. If you dry hop heavily, then you'll lose a lot of beer.

If there really is a technique that gave my beer dry-hopped characteristics without all these drawbacks, then I want to use it. But it sounds too good to be true, especially when the only information I can find about it all traces back to one man. Kristen is a highly-respected brewer and judge, so I have no reason to doubt his word.  But he's also on record saying, 'Don't trust some guy on the internet, test it yourself,' which is very true. So, I decided to experiment with the hop stand technique over the course of several batches.

My first experiment was The Simarillo Sociable, an American Session Ale that is defined by its hop aroma and flavor. Since I didn't know what to expect from the hop stand, I was cautious and only used 2 ounces of hops. In the non-hop-stand recipe I would use 3.5 ounces for aroma and dry-hop additions. I didn't want to over-bitter the beer, and I knew that I could always dry hop if the beer needed additional hop character.

My fear was unjustified. I certainly didn't over-bitter the beer. I also didn't add much in the way of aroma or flavor! The hop character of this batch is very muted and soon the whole thing will be off for a week of dry hopping.

So, experiment #1 was not a success. I've already brewed experiment #2, so I can't apply the lessons I've learned here to that batch. But when I get around to experiment #3 I'll increase the size of the flameout addition; I think it needs to be as big, if not larger, than the aroma + dry hop addition would be normally.

I've used Whirlfloc for nearly every beer I've made. It clears up the wort before I transfer it to the fermenter and helps me produce clear, haze-free beers. But it turns out that mass of fluffy, useless trub that fills the bottom of my brew kettle -- preventing me from racking a huge amount of wort -- is also due to Whirlfloc. Probably.

As with all homebrewing 'information' on the Internet, there's at least 3 differing opinions. Holders of each opinion produce their own 'evidence'* that contradicts opinions. The three camps are:

1. Whirlfloc always leaves fluffy trub that won't compact, thus you should never use whirlfloc.
2. Whirlfloc only leaves fluffy trub if you use too much of it.
3. Fluffy trub? Who cares. Just rack it into your fermenter.

Holders of the first opinion differ on their solution. Some suggest using Irish moss, saying that the trub compacts better and forms a nice cone after whirlpooling. Others say that kettle finings are unnecessary since nearly all of the trub will coagulate on its own.

Camp two suggests 1/4 - 1/2 of a Whirlfloc tablet in a 5-gallon batch. They say that this produces nice compact trub that forms a cone after whirlpooling.

The lassiez faire group three points to homebrew evidence* suggesting that trub is good for beer and leads to no haze or stability problems at all. This goes against pretty much everything I've heard from professional brewers, but the idea does have its adherents.

In yesterday's batch I used 2 Whirlfloc tablets, so if groups 1 or 2 are right, that could certainly be the source of my trouble. But the only way I can find out for sure is to experiment on future batches. My goal is to find a technique that produces clear wort (and clear beer), but that does not leave 15% of the wort in the kettle. I will try the following:

1. Use Irish moss in a batch
2. Use 1/4 tablet of Whirlfloc per 5-gallon batch
3. Use 1/2 tablet of Whirlfloc per 5-gallon batch

* 'Evidence' in homebrewing forms boils down to "I do this and my beers are fine. So, there."

• Recipe, Hopville
• Recipe, Fancy

I've stuck to the original idea of Rājasthān as a light, caramel-free English IPA with a focus on floral hop aroma. The initial batch was good, but had too much hop flavor and people kept suggesting it was a Surly clone due to its yeast and Citra aroma (Surly used Citra for the 2011 version of their Wet beer). I've addressed those problems by trying a new yeast, dropping the dry hops and, sadly, using NZ Pacific Jade instead of Citra. My plan was to use Citra, but it's sold out at my local store. Pacific Jade sounds interesting, though. And I know that Thornbridge has experimented with using NZ hops in their beer Jaipur, which was the inspiration for Rājasthān.

This is another recipe where I'm experimenting with an 80-minute hop stand, hence the huge flameout hop addition. If the beer needs more hop aroma then I'll dry hop with a mix of Ahtanum and NZ Pacific Jade.

Just a small flameout addition

Brewing

I've been experimenting with larger batch sizes, trying to produce 7-8 gallons of beer from a single brew session. Starting next month I'm brewing 5 batches of beer for a party and I'd like to be able to make enough beer to fill a keg for them while still leaving some beer for me. Brew days are scarce around here, I don't want to use five of them and not get any beer for myself. My plan was to do high-gravity partial boils, but then Homebrew Finds pointed me towards a great deal on kettles and I decided to treat myself to a 15-gallon kettle.

A new kettle is a huge change in a brewery, so I expected there to be a learning curve. The new kettle is much wider than my old one, while being only slightly taller. I knew this would lead to a greater evaporation rate -- I just didn't know how much. So I went into this brew with the goal of beginning to learn about my new system.

Brewing a larger batch is about more than just adding water and barley. A bigger batch slows down nearly every step of the process. You have to bring more strike water up to temp, you have to bring a bigger volume up to boil. It takes longer to run off, longer to chill, longer to rack. I can normally brew a 5 gallon batch in 5 hours. I hoped to get 8 gallons out of this batch and it took me about 7 hours.

Mashing was tricky, but I think that was due to the mill at Northern Brewer being set to grind finer than normal. The small particles of malt turned to a lot of dough balls that I had to break up. The fine grind did lead to slightly higher extract efficiency, which is great.

As expected, the evaporation rate is higher -- roughly 15% per hour. Further brewing will help me narrow that down. Despite the huge increase in water volume, it didn't take much longer to get the water up to temperature. Investing in my Blichmann burner was a good idea.

Higher efficiency and higher evaporation should result in a beer with a higher-than-expected OG, which this batch did have. But not as high as the math tells me it should be. According to my measurements it should be around 1.065, but it's actually at 1.062. Why? No idea. 'Brewing Math' is not always the same as 'Real Math', so the results you get might not be the ones you calculate.

Sizeable! Heavy, too.

That fine mash might also be why I had so much trub in this beer. I lost almost 2 gallons -- about 1/4 of my post-boil wort -- to trub. That's ridiculous. Instead of ending up with 8 gallons of finished beer, I'll now probably get 6. Considering all the extra work and time this brew day took, it's frustrating to end up with only slightly more beer than I would have if I'd brewed a normal-sized batch. I could have diluted it with water, bringing up the batch size and decreasing the high OG, but I didn't think of that at the time. Too late now.

The most recent episode of Can You Brew It tackled this beer, and they got the recipe straight from the brewer. Neat! Now I can compare the official version to my attempts.

The recipe that CYBI used is not that far off from my second clone attempt. I assumed they were sticking closer to Belgian beers than they actually are, so I used Pilsen extract (this recipe pre-dates my transition into partial mash). They actually use plain American two row. Our yeasts are very different, since I didn't know that this beer was based on a Wit yeast. I'm not convinced that the yeast is a huge factor in this beer. I thought the White 550 that I used in my beer was just fine. As long as your yeast is Belgian and throws off a lot of phenols and esters, you're in the right ballpark.

I'm also surprised that they don't dry hop, instead getting all of their hop aroma from the 30 minute whirpool. This is similar to the hop stand technique that I've been trying in my last few batches.

I still don't know how they are fermenting this beer so thoroughly. To get from 18 to 3 Plato requires attenuation to be around 83%. Maybe the suggested yeast can ferment that much, but White Labs puts its attenuation range as 74-78%. And it's not like the mash temperature is low enough to encourage this high fermentation -- Flying Dog gives a mash temp of 153. If I were brewing this again I'd probably still replace some of the grist with sugar, just to ensure a low final gravity.

CYBI said that this recipe should give you 74 IBU (using Rager), but when I enter it into Hopville I get 84 IBU. I'm not sure what's going on. I've adjusted my recipe in Hopville to give you 70 IBU (which is closer to the number Flying Dog gives), but if you want to hop it the way CYBI says to hop it, it's:

• 28g Warrior (17% AA) - 90 minutes
• 6g Amarillo (11% AA) - 15 minutes
• 6g Columbus (15% AA) - 15 minutes
• 19g Amarillo (11% AA) - 0 minutes (30 minute hop rest)
• 19g Columbus (15% AA) - 0 minutes (30 minute hop rest)